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The Tangled Web(19)



In Fulda, the news arrived that the CPE delegations were off to Paris and London to conduct negotiations. Everyone figured that getting ready for that must be why they hadn't been getting much in the way of instructions from the Department of International Affairs lately. The Special Commission held a bunch more sessions.

And ever since the affair of the placards, Wes kept hovering around Clara in a very overprotective manner, fretting every time the Special Commission went out of town until it was back safely. The rest of them thought it was funny, but he didn't even seem to realize that he was doing it.

Mark Early reported that they would finish up Fulda proper by the end of the month and start on the imperial knights the beginning of August. One at a time, he groaned. The imperial knights of Buchen Quarter were so jealous of their individual prerogatives that they hadn't been able to agree on a common time and place to hold even an introductory meeting so he could explain what the Special Commission's assignment was.

"Like hell they'll get away with that," Wes exploded.



The imperial knights of the Buchen Quarter were obviously not happy to be meeting in Fulda. Well, in a mown hay field outside Fulda. However, the combined visitation of the military administrator's regiment and the Fulda militia to each of their territories, individually, had been enough to persuade them of the prudence of agreeing.

Actually, Derek Utt thought, looking around the field, his soldiers weren't looking too bad these days. They had decent uniforms, finally. He wouldn't have chosen sickly orange himself—that was the best way he could describe the color—being more used to camouflage. But nobody expected them to be fighting in the field, so Frank Jackson hadn't sent them greeny-brown combat uniforms from Erfurt or Magdeburg. He hadn't sent them blue dress uniforms styled more or less after those used during the American Civil War, either—these being a product of what Melissa Mailey, in one of her more acerbic moments, called "reenactors' nostalgia" combined with the relative cheapness of cloth dyed with Erfurt woad. Dennis Stull, the civilian head of procurement, had just sent Derek a bank draft and a recommendation to do his best.

His best, when delegated to Harlan Stull's fiscal frugality, had turned out to be sickly orange. Good quality English fabric, Harlan said, but a bad dye lot. Or at least some Frankfurt merchant's bad guess as to whether or not the color would be popular. They'd paid the wives to make the uniforms up, which kept the money in the family as much as possible, so to speak.

They were even developing some esprit de corps. They were calling themselves the Fulda Barracks Regiment, these days. One of the sutlers had found them a set of regimental colors. Derek suspected that the banner had started life as some rich lady's party dress, but it had white and orange satin, so they were happy. And a logo. He couldn't make out what the logo was supposed to be—it looked to him like a lopsided blob—but it had one, and they had chipped in to pay for the flag themselves. Their weapons weren't as fancy as the ones carried by the imperial knights, but then his guys weren't planning on riding around in tournaments. They just planned on riding around looking mean. So far, he had been able to get horses for about half of them to ride at a time and was dual-training them as dragoons. Out in the boondocks like this, Derek had decided, flexibility came in ahead of doctrine any day. He didn't care what the army's organizational table called them. He just had a job to do. Horses were a convenience, frequently very handy in a pinch, even if your label said "infantry."

Of course, the horses had to be taken care of, but he was paying some of the older kids from Barracktown to do that.

Which reminded him that Andrea was still nagging about a school out there.

Plus, the regiment wanted an anthem.

He had learned that the Swedish custom was to sing Psalm 46—that was "Ein feste Burg"—and then start Psalm 67, starting to advance before the singing finished. That would not work for the Fulda Barracks Regiment. Too many of the men had been on the receiving end of those advances, so to speak. He'd have to think about an anthem. The first requirement was that it had to be something that neither the Catholics nor the Lutherans could claim. The second requirement was that it had to be something he was willing to hear them sing every day. And an anthem ought to be uplifting. Martial, militant, but not some dirty marching song.



Derek's eyes jerked back to the center of the field when Wes Jenkins yelled again.

One of the knights was waving around a copy of that obscene pamphlet with Clara Bachmeierin's name in it. Refusing to receive the Whore of Babylon as an envoy from the Special Commission.

Wes went on yelling. For a Methodist, he had picked up a colorful vocabulary.